The latest sign that PBS may be indeed moving away from reflexivelefty politics is its hardheaded and compelling new documentary FidelCastro, which premieres Jan. 31 and is the first non-Americanbiography in the network's American Experience series. (As executiveproducer Mark Samuels pointed out at the PBS news conference, anargument can be made that Castro, with his half-century-long "impacton American history," is an American experience, besides being "also atremendous story.")

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Veteran documentarian Adriana Bosch clearly shows the appeal of acharismatic revolutionary like Castro to a populace suffering from theoppressive Batista regime, but refuses to sentimentalize thecigar-smoking, iconic leader they got as a replacement. "It is thetragic story of a nation who saw a messiah in just a man," she says ofher film, which doesn't flinch from detailing the brutal realitybeneath Castro's charm: 500 Bastistianos tried and executed in lessthan three months, 20,000 people arrested after the Bay of Pigs, andso on.

Was Communism the reason for the treason of Castro's revolution — asCuban exiles protested in the early '60s? (Castro never actuallyadmitted that the Cuban revolution was socialist in nature until afterthe Bay of Pigs.) Or was it that Castro himself, as the film reveals,is simply a megalomaniac — someone who as a small boy threatened toburn his family's house down if they didn't send him to the school ofchoice, and who confiscated land from his own mother when he grew up?A University of Havana classmate interviewed by Bosch describes youngFidel as a combination of genius and juvenile delinquent, which seemspretty much on the mark.

At the very least, Fidel Castro is a welcome antidote to last year'sLooking For Fidel, Oliver Stone's pro-Castro documentary for HBO. "Ithink it approached a work of fiction," Bosch said, describing theinfamous moment in that film when a Cuban prisoner insists to Stone'scameras that 30 years in jail for stealing a boat seems quite fair tohim. ("I was shocked at that," Stone told Ann Louise Bardach in apriceless Slate interview, "but Bush would have shot these people, iswhat Castro said...")

"I agree with everything that Adriana just said," added MarifeliPerez-Stable, a Fidel Castro contributor and author of The CubanRevolution: Origins, Course and Legacy. "But I think nonetheless thatthe Oliver Stone film, in spite of Oliver Stone, is an importanthistorical document because it is the Commandante in his twilightyears, and because Stone sympathizes with him, there are no filters."

I asked Bosch, who was born in Cuba and has done several AmericanExperience documentaries about U.S. presidents, whether she seesCastro as a better or a worse man than he's generally depicted in themedia.

"If you have seen Fidel Castro portrayed as a Robin Hood, that wasdriven into the arms of the Soviet Union by the United States'unwillingness to accept Cuban nationalism, this film will portrayCastro as a worse man," she responded. "If you think he's a murdererthat imposed his rule on a Cuba that wasn't really wanting some of thechanges he was bringing forth, then this film portrays him as a betterman. It is up to you in the end to tell me how you see Castro afterwatching this film."

I see him as a ruthless dictator, of course. Yet watching the film'sdepiction of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it's hard not to feel rathernostalgic for the days when ruthless dictators weren't generallycontaminated by the suicidal poison of Islamic lunacy; if they beganacting too crazy, at least bigger ruthless dictators could rein themin. Khrushchev thought Castro was a madman and told him to back down;Castro called Khrushchev a bastard, but obeyed.

Timothy Naftali, a University of Virginia professor and co-author ofOne Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958-1964,describes in the film just why Khrushchev thought Castro, who'd senthim a letter during those tense days in 1962, was crazy.

"Ultimately, what the letter says is, `Nikita, if you have to usenuclear weapons against the United States to defend my country, andeven if that means the Americans will retaliate by blowing up mycountry, do it for the sake of international socialism," Naftali saidat the news conference. "It's a remarkable document. It scared thehell out of the Soviets...and we only learned this a few years ago."

"The thing about Castro, with the exception of the Cuban MissileCrisis, which is this really weird moment, he's generally a smartman," Naftali added. "There's one moment in 1964 he gets really angryat Lyndon Johnson and threatens to turn the water off to Guantanamo,but that's about as close as they come to invading Guantanamo."

The film depicts Castro's uncanny charm in connecting with commonpeople. And yet to Bosch, what was most shocking during her researchwas Castro's "inability to really understand what normal people needand want, and to always try to impose on a population heroic dreamsand heroic feats."

— Catherine Seipp is a writer in California who publishes the weblogCathy's World. She is an NRO contributor.